Wright - FITZBILLIES: stories & recipes from a 100-year-old cambridge bakery

DEDICATION

TO OUR CUSTOMERS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Thanks very much for coming; please come again soon.

TO OUR STAFF, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

If it wasnt for you, none of this would happen.

TO OUR LANDLORDS, SUPPLIERS AND BUSINESS PARTNERS

Thanks for your support and goodwill.

TO OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY, ESPECIALLY LIBERTY

Thanks for listening to us talk about nothing but Fitzbillies for eight years now, and probably a good few more to come.

CONTENTS

Fitzbillies is a 100-year-old cake shop, caf and bakery in the centre of the historic city of Cambridge. Although that makes us quite old by the standards of most businesses, a century is actually pretty young around here some of the colleges date back 800 years. Though were one of the youngest institutions in this beautiful place, we like to think were firmly at its heart.

The bakery was founded by a couple of local boys on their return from the First World War. Back then, before the appearance of fast food and ready meals, if students didnt want to eat in the full formality of a college dining room, there were only small local independent shops to serve them. Perhaps some hot soup or stew from the pub, or a cold pie or slice of ham from the butcher. Mainly, though, there was tea and cake, served to students by the likes of The Whim, the Copper Kettle and, most famous and beloved of all, Fitzbillies.

Fitzbillies was not a patisserie with fussy, aspirational confections; it didnt do Viennoiserie, rich with butter and accompanied by coffee. It offered a uniquely British kind of baking. Simple, familiar... not a million miles away from what mother might have cooked at home and loved equally by children, adults, working men and women, undergraduates, dons, divines and aristocrats. This kind of cake shop was a vital part of every small town, feeding everyone the treats they loved.

Our illustrious alumni

Of course, as part of the Cambridge story, Fitzbillies is also a destination for tourists and every year we serve thousands of people from all over the world. Its a strange thought. The caf is pretty, but not as gorgeous as the old college buildings; its old, but not as old as the institutions around it. Maybe, like us, our guests just want to sit, eat cake and absorb the unique atmosphere of the place.

Sometimes we see an advert on the television featuring a celebrity endorsement. You know the kind of thing a footballer tells everybody how good a particular kind of crisp is and so we started listing the people whove loved our cakes. The people who conquered Everest, discovered DNA and the proton, wrote brief histories of time, the inventors of webcams, microcomputers and atom bombs, creators of radio telescopes and members of supergroups, actors, archbishops... the occasional spy... and Stephen Fry.

To be honest, the list is so long and so brilliant that we cant even begin to write it down. Weve lost count of the many sparkling and influential people who have sat on our rickety chairs. So many essays and theses have been finished on our tables. Sure, there are glossier, more fashionable and modern bakeries, but were quietly confident that more of our customers have been Nobel Prize winners than any other bakery in the world.

Open to all

Proud though we are of our history, its not the best part. Sitting in the caf, we watch thousands of stories unfold. A builder walks in to buy sausage rolls for lunch and falls into conversation with the guy from the tech startup whos also buying them for his team lunch. There are a couple of oarsmen from the Cambridge Blue Boat sitting in the coffee shop, which always flusters the baristas. Theres an elderly couple whove come in every Wednesday since they retired. There are always young couples studying together, flirting or breaking up, and old couples popping by to reminisce about when they did exactly the same thing. During interview weeks, we see nervous young applicants brought in by their far more nervous parents. Over the next three years the lucky ones will be back dozens more times, sometimes with books, a new boyfriend or their tutor for an informal supervision, and, if all goes well, the whole family will be back in on Graduation Day. Many return to college to get married and were proud to make their wedding cakes. Perhaps the best thing is when people whove spent particularly happy times here bring in their babies or children and it feels like all of this will go on and on forever. It may sound strange, but to us, and our regulars, were a neighbourhood caf even if its for a particularly special little neighbourhood, a sort of family favourite, even when that family is now dispersed all over the globe.

This is the tradition that Fitzbillies has continued, unbroken to the present day. Simple British baking in an entirely democratic environment, serving sticky buns and sausage rolls to dustmen and dons alike. Since the last Lyons Tea Shop shut its doors, weve been amongst the few surviving carriers of that torch making people happy with tea, cake and hospitality.

This book will take you into the unique world of Fitzbillies. The work of the bakers, their recipes and techniques, alongside our history and the story of how we turned the business around. Well hear the stories of some of our amazing customers, tales from our special corner of authentic British baking and youll learn how you too can make people happy with tea and cake.

The latest chapter in the history of Fitzbillies began on 9 February 2011 when we first read that it had gone bankrupt and closed down. Tim kept a diary from that day through to our reopening. Now, with the benefit of hindsight and eight years experience, its interesting to look back on the combination of naivety and determination that saw us through.

Notes from Tims diary

It must have appeared simultaneously on my laptop in a coffee shop where I was putting the final gloss on a piece for the Guardian and on Alisons desk in the marketing company where she was working. I was quietly doing my job, writing about food, and she was doing hers, relaunching and guiding big corporate brands.

It was a tweet from @stephenfry, comedian and famed alumnus of Cambridge University, who posted:

No! No! Say it aint so not Fitzbillies? Why I tweeted a pic of one of their peerless Chelsea buns but a sixmonth ago.

9 February 2011

Id had some experience in catering. Id spent a chunk of my youth working in kitchens in seaside towns in the UK, and in diners and dives in the US. But that was decades ago. Al had grown up in Cambridge. Her 21st birthday cake a vast croquembouche had been ordered from Fitzbillies and, like Stephen Fry, she knew the place as a Cambridge institution, a tea shop and bakery that prided itself on selling generations of students the worlds stickiest Chelsea buns. Now, when we followed the link to the local paper at the bottom of the tweet, we saw that recession had driven it into bankruptcy and it had shut its doors.

Did you see the tweet?

I did. Terribly sad. Awful how places like that are going

Ive called the agents. Were going to view it on Monday.

These days, when we think of bankruptcy, we tend to imagine large companies or even small countries cutting up their credit cards in an organised way. The reality for thousands of high-street businesses is more depressing, more human and more brutally ugly. When the bailiffs arrived at Fitzbillies, they asked the customers to leave, gave the staff a few minutes to assemble their personal possessions and hand over their keys and led them out of the building. The shop was still full of food, the bakery full of half-baked cakes and mixer bowls full of flour. The landlords subsequently cleared the place well, but when we arrived just weeks later, it was dark, filthy and unloved.